FORE:(Air: Rendez-moi mon cuelle de bois.)After this Flicit and her husband returned to Genlis, where they spent the summer with the Marquis and the wife he had recently married.
FORE:Shortly afterwards, passing his father in the great gallery at Versailles, the Duc de Richelieu said to him
FORE:Ah! cried he. I have just met the Emperor as I came to you. I had only time to rush under a portico and am dreadfully afraid he recognized me.
THREE:He was not, however, to live to see the realisation of his fears. Not much more than a year after Lisettes return from her convent, a terrible calamity befell her in the loss of the father whose love and protection had made the sunshine of her life, and by whose death her lot was entirely changed and her happiness ruined.
THREE:When at length she arrived in St. Petersburg she found the city in a frenzy of delight. They danced in the streets, embracing each other, and exclaimingAs time went on Trzia found that her influence as well as that of Tallien was rapidly declining. Her salon was not at all likely to last long. Those of the court and of society before the Revolution had been of an entirely different order; held by women who, besides their beauty or other attractions, were in an assured position, surrounded by well-known connections and friends, forming an intimate society sure to be met at their houses, and always ready to carry on conversation, avoid all topics likely to give offence, and make themselves generally agreeable. Nobody was admitted there who [341] was not accustomed to the usages of the world or who would interfere with the harmony and general tone of the house. People went there, not to engage in political discussions or to make love to their hostess, but to spend a pleasant evening and meet the friends they knew and liked. These salons continued to be frequented by their usual guests year after year without any more change than the lapse of time inevitably brings.
